History of Art’s Mariam Souali Presents Her Drawings “A Three Person Game” at Marrakech Exhibition

Miriam Abouzid Souali, Visiting Fulbright Scholar and artist in History of Art, is currently exhibiting a collection of drawings in a special exhibition at the Comptoir des Mines Gallery in Marrakech, Morocco. “A Three-Person Game” is an installation of drawings that merges art and play, fiction and history through the metaphor of a chess party. The installation is part of the collective exhibition “Crossings,” organized in conjunction with the African Contemporary Art Fair 1:54, which concludes in April, 2018.

From the artist:

“Being simultaneously a political, a military and a poetic metaphor that combines rigidity and harmony, constraint and invention, chess is a reflection of the world. “A Three-Person Game’’ is especially an allegory that recalls the history of a centuries-old geopolitical game between three civilizations: the Occident, the Maghreb and Sub-Africa.  These three civilizations are represented by three child-players, one black, brown and white. Each are drawn on a large canvas, but also by the giant chessboard and its three different sets of childish chess pieces installed in the middle of the three drawings. Chess is a metaphor that pictures the playful but atrocious nature of power relations - between individuals, in their everyday exchanges, or between communities/nations, in their “diplomatic” relations. Chess strategies depict how these power relations work: the empowerment of some and the impoverishment and suffering of others.”